By March

The first time we did Swapmania I’d wrung my hands for weeks prior, came up with eleventy-jillion rules, and figured maybe nine people would show up and play.  By the end we had more than 1,200 comments, and when we did it again last summer I think we had something like 900 comments.  So: I think we can call it a success.

Today, I, March the Maleficent, decree the start of our Winter/Spring Swapmania, and this post will stay up and will run through Tuesday.  We moved it to a Friday start date in response to requests.  I’m going to do an abbreviated set of instructions below.  If you are new to this and have no idea what I am talking about, and/or you want to see the “full” list of instructions and how it actually worked in comments, click here for a link to the first Swapmania.

Today you are invited to list, in comments, your swap bottles of perfume, partial bottles, minis, decants and samples.

Please include:

• a brief description of each item you’re offering – such as oz/ml size, concentration (EdT, EdP), and any other info you think might be of interest (vintage/partial/used/boxed…)
• the country you live in (so people can take that into consideration for customs and shipping expense)
• whether you are open to receiving NON-PERFUME ITEMS in exchange, or whether you really would prefer only other perfume items.  FWIW people ended up swapping for all sorts of amazing things, including hand-knit scarves and hats, chocolate, tea, etc.
• You can also say if you are looking for a particular bottle of something(s) to swap for –hope springs eternal!
• Go ahead and list your contact info up front if you want to, that seems to be working.  Don’t just type your normal email address in there, though (see #2 below.)

Clear as mud?  Here’s a sample of what a swap listing might look like:  “Hermes Jardin Sur le Nil, 1.6 oz. EDT, half full, boxed.  I live in the US and am open to swaps abroad.  Willing to swap for perfume or other items. email me — jane doe at gmail dot com”

What can people offer to swap in exchange for your perfumes?  Other bottles/partials/minis/samples etc., or things.  When offering for a swap item, please say what country you’re from so they can take that into consideration.

This will work best if everyone keeps an open mind – let us practice and presume honesty, good intentions, and respect.

Someone posted the helpful detail that you can search comments on a PC by hitting CTRL + F (think “find”.)  This makes it easier if you’re looking through massive comments for a particular fragrance and/or your swap offers.  If you’re on a Mac, try (if you are in a browser like Chrome) hitting Edit, Find to search.

The fine print:

1) Caveat Swapper.  This is not eBay, and I am not your mother.  I will not be mediating disputes. If anything went horribly wrong in the last Swapmania, I never heard about it.  I think most everyone had a blast.  But if something goes wrong with your swap, that’s between you and the other swapper.  Perfume Posse and I are not responsible or liable.

Patty wrote this in a post this week, I’m pasting it here: “The best rule I have, make sure the entire swap is complete and both parties say they are happy before you open and start using. If you swap for a fragrance and for some reason the fragrance you were sending in the swap becomes unavailable because of breakage or something wrong with it, don’t guilt your swappee into taking something they don’t really want so you can keep The Precious. If you want it that bad, and they don’t want something else you have, just offer to pay them the going rate for it or send it back and cry yourself to sleep over the loss.  If you’ve been using it with wild abandon and have to send it back, do offer to compensate them for what you have used if it’s beyond just a couple of sprays.”

2) You and your swapper are responsible for figuring out a way to get in touch with each other to exchange details (mailing address etc.)  Many of you already have gravatar IDs that link to your websites, etc.  You can use MakeupAlley (MUA,) FaceBook, LiveJournal, email, whatever.  PLEASE DO NOT type your email addresses into comments; they are collected by spambots.  If you do so, spell it out:  chris dot smith at hotmail dot com  

3) When you have completed a swap, please go back and mark your item as taken.

4) Please remember to behave yourselves; often, two or more people are making offers for the same bottle of Cuir de Russie, and only one person is going to get it (unless the owner wants to split.)  Last time there was some fairly intense competition on certain bottles, and that’s the way it works.  Let’s treat our fellow swappers with kindness and respect.  Once you’ve agreed to a swap and exchanged mailing info, etc., please don’t back out if you suddenly see something pop up that you’d rather have.  The karma fairies will turn all your Guerlain into vinegar.

5) Send your swap in a timely fashion. Once you’ve agreed to do this, send your side of the swap.  If you’re not going to be able to do so until April, you need to tell your potential co-swapper ahead of time.

6) MUA peeps – you can’t just say “go see my MUA list and see if there’s anything you’d swap for.”  Lots of folks on here aren’t on MUA.  Also I’m not thrilled with people pasting in their entire, lengthy MUA wish/swap lists … because that’s what MUA is for, right?  But I won’t flame you for it.

Okay, kids!  This was a huge blast last time, and people got some amaaaazing things, including extras in their packages.  So go have fun!

by “Don’t Panic!  March Will Be Back” Musette

March is finishing up some stuff that is taking up 10,080 minutes this week so I’m stepping into her Size Sixes (I’m 5’9″ tall and …well, let’s just say those boots iz squallin’!!!)

I lived in an urban environment for most of my adult life and never gave much thought to the good ol’ days – most cosmopolitan areas are constantly shifting so you don’t have much time to mourn What Was – besides, I have a really fragile visual memory that is only now allowing me to recall the visual past – I’m one of those people ror whom, if you knock down a building and replace it with another, in the time it takes for that new building to go up I’ve forgotten what was previously there (for awhile I’d forgotten that the Palmolive Building in Chicago still existed (I only saw it from Lake Shore Drive as a child, with its famous Lindbergh Beacon).  Sad, but true….but these past 5 years, writing for the blog and living in a rather static environment, has allowed my skittering mind to settle and reflect on a lot of my early sensory experiences.  Here are a few of them:

Thinking about the Palmolive Building got me thinking about toothpaste (don’t ask) – when I was a kid we used Ipana, which I loved (great taste!!) – then my mom switched us to Crest (ew).  I miss Ipana.  It always smelled – and tasted – like that intriguing Beeman’s Gum which I could swear came in tablet form, like Chiclets.  Am I making that up?  Anyway, I love the smell of both of those.   Does Ipana still exist? 

Nervine.  My mother suffered from depression and spent most of her waking moments in a otc-induced fog, to keep from killing everyone in sight.  This was in the 60s, so there was no Cymbalta – in fact, we’d not yet accepted depression as a chemical imbalance.  You had ‘nerves’, if you were a woman, and took ‘powders’.  My mother took Nervine.  We all knew to get the hell out of the way when she pulled that glass tube out of the medicine cabinet – but I always was fascinated by that glass tube, with those tablets…because they FIZZED!  I would peek around the bathroom door (I was 6) and listen for the plop! and fzzzzz!  and once, even sneaked my nose in the glass when she turned her back (it tickled).   To this day I have a fondness for effervescent tablets because in my house those tablets were a mysterious signal that everything would level out in an hour or so and I would get my mother back.  And dinner.

A-1 Salve (Wizard Products Co, Chicago).  Apparently this company got binked on several occasions in the late 40s by the JAMA Bureau of Investigations and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misrepresentation (false claims!  can you IMAGINE?  what a concept!)  – but what did that matter?  My folks LOVED this salve, reputed to cure everything from eczema to ringworm and the corresponding sulphur soap, which purportedly killed everything in its path.  The petroleum base and rotten-egg sulphur smell equaled HEALTHY TIMES in our household.  I came upon half a boxtop, when I was clearing out my pop’s old meds cabinet and those smells came roaring back, just from the visual!  I’ve forgotten the scent of 90% of the ‘fumes I reviewed in the past 4  months – but A-1 salve?  Nevah!

Poly-vi-Sol. Brown bottle with bulb dropper.  3 drops on the tongue in the morning.  Is there any Boomer alive who doesn’t remember the smell and that weird B-vitamin taste?  But I don’t remember it smelling or tasting bad – just very vitamin-y.  And all my peers seem to remember it similarly.  Funnily, this current generation of moms (at least those on the blogs) seem to find it VILE!  Did they change something?  Again, for me, this is one of those ‘everything is totally okay in my world’ smells, unlike Cod Liver Oil, which smells like terror.  To this day.  Fish Oil tabs are my Cross To Bear now.

So….what are your Good Ol’ Days smells?  Mine seem to be all about dosing and slathering but ymmv – Perfume?  Food?  Patent Medicines?  Housecleaning supplies?? (my household madeleine  is Sprayway Glass Cleaner)  – would love to hear about them!  I have a buncho samples to give away, including Givenchy’s Dahlia Noir – I was going to review it but Robin @ NST did it way better here  - no reason to reinvent that wheel.  It’s worth a sniff and I’ll throw in a couple of other samps to a few winners via random.org

By March

Hey, everyone.  This next few weeks I have some affairs to attend to, so my posting is going to be pretty minimal.

I read everyone’s comments on the timing/interest in Swapmania.  And …. I can’t please everyone (isn’t that always the case?)  Some of you asked for late Feb/early March, which I can’t do for various reasons, and I’m sorry.  Also I avoided Valentine’s day and President’s day weekend.

Others of you asked that Swapmania start on a Friday (instead of my usual Wednesday posting date) because a lot of action happens in the first couple of days and you were feeling left out of the loop, since apparently your school/work schedules prohibit you from hanging out on the Posse all day, setting up swaps. (Insert smiling emoticon here.)

So instead of doing Wed – Sun like last time: we’re going to start Swapmania on Friday, February 3 and let it run through the weekend and into the following week, depending on how much swappage is still going on.  So dig through your boxes, dust off your decants, order your atomizers, figure out where you stuck that bottle of White Shoulders your Aunt Eunice gave you… and we’ll start the party on Friday, Feb. 3!

March

By March

Nope, no perfume review today.  But I’m not completely worthless.  A number of you have asked about another round of Swapmania – our free-for-all perfume swapfest that we did a year ago at Thanksgiving, a total experiment on my part, and it was so successful we did it again last summer.  We got more than 1,200 comments the first time, and more than 900 the second time.  That’s a LOT of swaps.

Y’all have evolved some pretty complicated swaps – international, splits, and cool swaps for non-perfume items.  (I think at this point there’s an underground swapfest going on internationally for chocolates and other stuff we can’t get in the U.S.)  You have also swapped for hand-knit scarves, tea, cosmetics, etc.

Or you can just stick to plain old perfume, nothing wrong with that.

Anyhow, I thought we’d do another either later this month or in February, how do you feel about that?  I want to avoid a holiday weekend like Thanksgiving, a bunch of people were disappointed that time because they were out of town and couldn’t play.   Is there some date I shouldn’t do?  Does anyone have a strong preference?

Also, you can drop in comments here any past issues or questions you’d like addressed.  As far as I know, things have gone pretty fabulously, if you can deal with the insanity of the pace of postings.

The only thing off the top of my head I’ll put in here: I know some swappers are/were upset by U.S. residents who wouldn’t swap internationally.  From my own perspective:  I dread shipping internationally because of US customs issues and requirements.  Maybe because I live near D.C., the level of scrutiny and hassle is pretty intense.  So please don’t take it personally – it is not a trust issue.  If you live in a town or country where you just drop your package off with your local delivery wombat, no questions asked, it’s hard to imagine what a pain customs shipping can be.  I do want to note here that I have bought, sold, and swapped with people from all over the world, and never been ripped off or had a package lost.

Finally, your responses to last week’s going-gray post were amazing!  I really enjoyed reading them, although at some point I gave up trying to respond to all of them.  There were some great gray-hair tips and cross-conversations going on in comments.  I am stunned by how many of you are rocking the silver fox yourselves.  By the way, I just had the last stray bits of hair color trimmed from my hair today.  My stylist is working on maximizing the curls, and gave me another “blue shampoo” to try.  Sitting directly across from me was a woman, 60-ish, with long, white and silver hair, ponytail length. She was stunning.

image: Bill the Cat and friends… don’t you love that image?  Bill the Cat is the unofficial mascot of Swapmania until I get an email from Berkeley Breathed’s lawyers telling me to knock it off.

March

By March

Hi, everyone.  Happy new year.  Let’s hope 2012 will be a better year for all of us.  I’m writing this post on New Year’s Day because this is going to be a crazy busy week for me and I don’t have the heart to dump another post on Anita.  I’m Quing of the Posse, I can blog about anything I want to, right?  So this post isn’t about perfume, it’s about gray hair.  I probably won’t be on here to comment until later tonight.

I started going gray in college; I’ve been hiding it for almost thirty years.  My natural color is espresso brown, trending toward off-black – a nod to my Celtic/American Indian heritage.  The gray is hereditary too. My 89-year-old father still has a full head of hair, but he was silvery gray by his early forties, and my mother probably would have been if she hadn’t dyed it religiously (she had gorgeous, stick-straight, coal-black hair as a young woman).  In my twenties I dyed my hair jet black, which looked perfectly plausible with my pale skin.  Then I moved on to deep reds and rich, dark browns.

About a year ago I asked my colorist how gray I was, and was startled by her response of “Oh, about seventy percent, probably.”  I had a really pretty streak of silver coming up from my widow’s peak in front, and I played around with leaving that part free of the dye job.  Then I decided: what the heck, I’m going to let it all grow out and see how it looks.  I can always re-dye it if it’s awful.

It took awhile.  I suffered through the ugly-root grow-out phase, then cut it shorter, then trimmed it again.  It’s now about six inches long and all natural color.

I noticed a couple of things right away.  My hair is definitely thicker; in hindsight I don’t think marinating my scalp in industrial-strength haircolor every five weeks was doing it any favors.  It’s also really soft, which surprises me.   Can I tell you how much I don’t miss spending time and money coloring it?

My hair’s both dry and wavy, I almost never shampoo unless I’ve been doing something really dirty, like cleaning up the yard.  Twice a week in the shower I wet it and put on a squirt of Aveda Blue Malva Conditioner* and let it sit while I do my thing.  There’s something reddish in our water (iron?), it stains the tiles, and the Aveda, which is purple-y, keeps the color bright.  This was a recommendation from the guy who cuts my hair, which was nice of him, considering they don’t sell Aveda.  (BTW he does not recommend the matching Blue Malva shampoo, which he says is very drying.)  Then I either run through a dab of jojoba oil or some anti-frizz product, and let it air dry.  Enigma, who has very long corkscrew curls, got a bunch of curly-girl hair product for Christmas which we’re playing with.  I think my favorite is the Ouidad Climate Control Heat and Humidity Gel*, which cuts the frizz but doesn’t leave my hair crunchy.

And my new, natural hair color?  It’s … kind of fabulous, in my opinion.  Much better than I’d hoped for.  Here’s a photo from the back (surprise!) so you can see the huge contrast from the front, where I still have mostly dark hair around my face.  The gray streaks range from steel to silver.  I’ve received some compliments, including from a woman who wanted to know where I got it colored like that.  As you can see, the top of my head is almost pure gray/silver, and then halfway down the back it reverts to a solid dark brown, so I’m still experimenting with the cut.  I think it’s better a little longer, like it is now, because that softens the radical color shift underneath.

I do think it makes me look older, in that I have sort of a baby face of an indefinite age.  Not dyeing it places me solidly at my real age  – late forties — and I’m okay with that.  Online research into “going silver” etc. reveals that many women have made this same journey, for lots of the same reasons, and at the same age.  None of them view it as giving up so much as fed up with the maintenance, chemicals, and expense, along with a subtle rebellion against the idea that gray hair is some kind of chronic condition that needs to be treated – on women, but not necessarily on men, who look “distinguished” with gray hair.

Makeup-wise I’ve made a few adjustments.  I look better with a bit more color – a touch of eyeshadow, a dab of blush, a stronger lip.  The whole nude-lip thing is too washed out now.

Finally, and without going into hilarious details, there are clearly men out there, including younger men, who are into the silver fox look.  Take that, Lady Clairol.

Okay, your turn, if anyone’s read this far.  Are you rocking the silver fox yourself?  Contemplating it?  If you used to color your gray hair and then stopped, why, and how did it work out?  Any silver fox suggestions, product recommendations, or insights?

photos: taken by Diva so you can see the contrast between the dark hair framing my face and how silver it is from behind.  FYI I’m barefaced in that photo and squinting into the sun, not getting ready to tear somebody apart.

*Footnotes: Blue Malva conditioner gets a 3.9/5 on MUA.  Most reviewers are using it to tone down the brassiness in their bleached blonde/highlighted hair, rather than on gray hair.   They point out that it’s not very moisturizing (which is true) and they alternate with heavier conditioners on other days.  Also worth noting: it smells very “Aveda.”  I like the smell in small doses, but it’s distinctive, and you might not.

The Ouidad Climate Control gel gets a 3.7/5.  Reading reviews, the most favorable are from people with hair like mine – soft curls and not too long, thick or coarse.  Reviewers with fabulously thick, coarse, curly hair complain that it doesn’t have enough curl “hold” and doesn’t control the frizz well enough.

March